A Night Out at Roxy Ball Room

With the new found freedom and cocktail nights breaking the bank it’s time to find an alternative night out…enter Roxy. Roxy Ball Room, nicknamed “Roxy’s”, is the night out that every friend will enjoy. Whether you simply want a drink, a game of pool, a pizza night or a full night of activities, Roxy’s has a lot to offer. On my visit to their Merrion street location I was lucky enough to test out their duckpin bowling and crazy pool, alongside a pizza, some drinks, and of course I brought some friends along for the ride too.

Duckpin Bowling

A fun and quick alternative to your average game of bowling. Each player gets three tries each go, in comparison to the usual two, meaning that you can rake up a pretty high score. The only downside is that the game was a tad glitchy for us as the pins often came down with the front pin missing, making it impossible to get a strike. On the upside, the game was really fun, you get lots of rounds, and it is right next to the bar! Who doesn’t want a bit of drunk bowling?

Crazy Pool

Never have I ever seen crazy golf combined with pool before, but Roxy’s made that happen. You are presented with a variation of different tables with loops and obstacles at varying difficulties and you have six tries to get the ball in the hole. We had lots of fun with this game, and it was great to try something new. My one suggestion would be that the tables are too smooth so we often ran into the problem of the ball rolling off the table or getting stuck in the exact same place, this could also be improved by changing the sides of the table so that the ball can bounce off of them.

Pizza Time

With all those games and drinks you are bound to work up an appetite and Roxy’s pizza is there to solve that problem. If you’re a bit peckish then you can buy by the slice, but let’s be honest a full pizza is always the better choice. Roxy’s has recently changed their pizza bases and my Italian boyfriend was thoroughly impressed by them. My only point of criticism is that their pizza range is very limited, with only two vegetarian options (including margherita) and no vegan or gluten free option. If they improve their menu to include a few more topping and base options, then their pizza would be incredible.

Overall, the five of us had a great time at Roxy’s and the staff was amazing and very friendly. I would definitely recommend Roxy’s to anyone that hasn’t been as it is a great location for birthdays, befriending flatmates, or a simple games night. Roxy’s is everchanging and I can’t wait to see how they develop this fantastic business further.

Jules Rimet Still Gleaming? Shadows cast in spite of dazzling England performance

Sunday 11th July. The final. Students were out in droves clamouring for an England victory. Never before has an English side in our recent memory grown into a tournament bona fide and showed such tenacity in the face of tough opposing sides. After Luke Shaw’s opener in the second minute, hope that football was coming home swept across the nation. It was only after an equaliser in full-time and the inevitable defeat suffered at the hands of Italian penalties that England’s Euros 2020 hopes were crushed. The dream was all over. Or was it?

England’s performance this Euros started off shakily, but steadily picked up pace, much like a Kyle Walker rescuing run, tracking back to extricate the defence. Defensively unblemished until the final two games, full of youthful attacking potential in the likes of Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho and Phil Foden to name a few, England proved the initial doubters wrong, demonstrating that they had the maturity and confidence to seriously challenge at major tournaments. The maturity shown in the final stages of the Denmark game were some of the most beautiful passages of English football I have ever seen. Evidently, hope should remain that Qatar scheduled for winter next year will provide ample opportunity for this bright squad of players to go all the way once more.

Fans recklessly overpowered Wembley Stadium employees on Sunday to gain entry into the national team’s biggest fixture in recent memory (Credit: The Guardian)

However, this improvement has largely been overshadowed by the events that followed the Italian victory. First-hand reports via video footage came streaming in after the match of mobs of men shoving Wembley Stadium stewards to gain access to the already capped-off 60,000 capacity venue. After a year which has seen Pride marches cancelled, Sarah Everard’s vigil ambushed by police and Black Lives Matter Protests quashed, the acquittal of these privileged members of the public of such insolent behaviour is a startlingly low blow.

Adding insult to injury, three English players Marcus Rashford, Saka and Sancho who took courageous, unlucky long walks to the penalty spot have since been subject to inordinate amounts of abuse. Gareth Southgate, in his latest press statement issued since the final, named the abuse of the three stars ‘unforgivable’. Saka spoke out on Thursday, rightly pointing to the fact that the “powerful platforms are not doing enough to stop these messages”.

Not only were reportedly 1,000 racially abusive tweets removed from Twitter on Sunday night, but the famous Withington mural of Rashford MBE was vandalised by those insensitive members of the British public. Only five people have been arrested after Saka and co. were racially abused online. Boris Johnson has alleged that any England fans guilty of racist abuse from now on will be banned from matches.

However, racist abuse is not always as obvious as a tweet or a mural defacement; it often manifests itself in more covert, malignant forms. Sunday night was not the first time we bore witness to such intellectual depravity this tournament. We all heard the heavy jeering English players received during the Croatia fixture upon taking took the knee for Black Lives Matter, as well as the incessant booing of Scottish, German, and Danish national anthems. Racist attitudes even infiltrated the attitudes of senior government officials such as Priti Patel who had previously labelled the player’s defiant protests “gesture politics”, much to Tyrone Mings’ documented upset.

We must take positives from the England team’s budding performance in what has been one of their most successful and enjoyable collective recent performances on the international stage. However, it is imperative that are not caught sleeping; expunging this more repugnant side from memory would be extremely disadvantageous. The nationalism and patriotism inherent to many English fans’ identities often begets unnecessary hatred. While the wait for the Three Lions to re-initiate training for Qatar 2022 begins, the actions of many fans on the weekend must not be taken lightly. Evidence already suggests that they seriously jeopardized our chances at hosting the World Cup in 2030. If we want the Jules Rimet to remain gleaming, we have to prove to other nations that we have not only what it takes to kick racism and bigotry out of football, but the common human decency to bring back much-needed respect to the sport we know and love.

Image Credit: The Telegraph

No thanks Estrid, we’ll reclaim our own body hair

‘Hey friend,’ the email read. ‘I’ve got a super-smooth surprise for you.’

It was from Estrid, one of the many ‘revolutionary’ feminine hair removal companies springing up recently. You may yourself have spotted their pastel-pink razors plastered across Instagram or creeping into your DMs.

The offending email was infantilising, playing on Gen-Z terminology to hook in a customer – “we’re like you!” the email screamed. Between liberal rainbow and heart emojis, they denoted themselves as a ‘female-first razor brand that celebrates inclusivity, body positivity, and equality’. They even offered a free razor, all for the low price of an #ad on your personal Instagram account. Now that all sounds good in theory, doesn’t it? But how exactly do they fit into a new era in which empowered personal choice shapes consumerism?

Image credit: Harper’s Bazaar 1922

Though body hair removal has been practiced by women for centuries, only more recently has it become a ‘necessity’ through social stigmatisation. The first female-specific razor was introduced to the market in 1915 by Gillette – the Milady Décolleté. Beneath this flowery name lay the new implication that body hair was unsanitary and unsightly, with shame functioning as a vehicle to further this new industry. Thus, the war against female body hair was born.

Feminine razor and hair removal companies have built their empire by creating a problem and inspiring insecurity. Women shouldn’t be hairy, they told us. Women should be smooth, sleek, sexual. This message stuck, for the most part, until very recently when self-empowerment and body positivity movements changed the game. Body hair removal brands now occupy an uncomfortable space, and have quickly changed tack, with new businesses bubbling up to fill the emergent market gap.

Image credit: Fern McErlane

Gillette now gleefully crows ‘Say pubic!’ on their social media, openly celebrating hair-down-there, and shares ‘feminist icon’ Ruth Bader-Ginsburg quotes. It’s a far cry from the ‘embarrassment’ of female body hair that they previously shilled. Estrid’s Instragram account is flush with carefully curated, aesthetically pleasing images, and memes likely created by an underpaid intern. They do raise valid points surrounding the necessity of vegan, cruelty-free, and sustainable products (something that in my opinion they should focus more upon). Yet, there is no admission from Gillette, or any other brand in the industry, of their part in creating the body hair stigma that they now “fight” against. In the era of real body positivity movements, it cloys of corporate desperation. More importantly, there is an unspoken unwillingness to take the blame. Should we let the same businesses that shamed and politicised our bodies now encourage us to choose for ourselves? It’s important to remember that as appealing these new brands may be, they’re not your friends. They’re selling you something, be it a product, or an idealised lifestyle (attainable only by using said product).

So, to these companies, my takeaway message is: back off. If we want to seek you out, we will. You don’t get to offer us a choice that was our own to make in the first place.

(But thanks for the free razor.)